The Use of Force / In a darkened theater, 911 calls end in death

Seth Rosenfeld, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Photo: LACY ATKINS

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Mesha Monge- Irizarry, mother of Idriss Stelley, remembers the shooting of her son, who was shot to death by cops in June of 2001. Mesha won a $500.000 settlement from the city which she is donating towards a special fund.06/25/03 in San Francisco. less

Mesha Monge- Irizarry, mother of Idriss Stelley, remembers the shooting of her son, who was shot to death by cops in June of 2001. Mesha won a $500.000 settlement from the city which she is donating towards a ... more

Photo: LACY ATKINS

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The Death of Idriss Stelley. Chronicle graphic by John Blanchard

The Death of Idriss Stelley. Chronicle graphic by John Blanchard

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PROTEST2-C-19JUN01-MT-HO
Copy photo of Idress IDRISS "Scotty" Stelley (right) and his girlfriend Summer Galbreath.
At a noon rally, protesters demonstrated outside the SF Hall of Justice against the killing of a knife wielding mentally disturbed man at the Metreon last week. Idress "Scotty" Stelley was at the theater disrupting a movie - police arrived and he was shot and killed when he threatened them with a knife. The protesters felt the shooting was not neccessary.
Photo was taken approximately 2 weeks before Stelley's death.
Stelley's mother, Mesha Monge-Irizarry, says she took the photo. - RR less

PROTEST2-C-19JUN01-MT-HO
Copy photo of Idress IDRISS "Scotty" Stelley (right) and his girlfriend Summer Galbreath.
At a noon rally, protesters demonstrated outside the SF Hall of Justice against the killing ... more

The Use of Force / In a darkened theater, 911 calls end in death

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Late on a Wednesday night, San Francisco police began receiving emergency calls from the Metreon theater complex. One caller said a man with a gun was in theater 14, threatening to open fire. Another said the man had a knife. A third, the man's girlfriend, said he was having a psychiatric breakdown and might hurt someone.

According to the Police Department's training workbook, reports like these of a "crime in progress" call for a carefully coordinated response: Officers should approach cautiously and take cover, as one officer assumes leadership to resolve the situation safely, with minimum force.

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Instead, what occurred at the city's largest theater complex on June 13, 2001, was chaotic and deadly. Within a few minutes of arriving on the scene, according to police records, officers fired more than 20 shots, wounding one of their own and killing a mentally disturbed man, 23-year-old Idriss Scott Stelley.

A police investigation concluded that the officers acted properly, and the district attorney's office found they committed no crime. After Stelley's mother, Mesha Monge-Irizarry, sued, accusing the department of using excessive force and poorly training the officers, the city denied liability but paid $500,000 to settle the suit.

The Metreon incident is one of four police shootings The Chronicle examined that killed or injured civilians and officers. In each case, lawsuits and Public Records Act requests required the department to release information that shed light on the shootings and their official investigations, which are not normally public. In each case, the city denied liability but paid a large settlement.

Last year, the department revised its rules for investigating police shootings in an effort to ensure timely and complete inquiries. The Stelley case, investigated under rules the department adopted in a previous attempt to improve shooting inquiries, highlights some of the challenges facing the department's latest effort.

Two independent experts on police practices whom The Chronicle consulted said the shooting appeared to be justified because Stelley posed an imminent danger at the instant the officers fired. And it is clear that the officers repeatedly tried commands and less-than-lethal kinds of force to control Stelley.

But the experts said the officers who rushed to theater 14 used tactics that needlessly endangered themselves and the public. Had they used appropriate tactics, the experts said, Stelley might be alive.

In addition, despite earlier controversies over other shootings, Chief Heather Fong's report to the Police Commission did not fully examine the tactics before the shooting.

Fong's report, however, described a series of steps the department was taking to improve officer training on how to deal with the mentally ill and to provide officers with nonlethal weapons that fire "beanbags." About 39 percent of the patrol force has taken a special 40-hour course, and officers have used beanbag guns in 25 incidents.

In an interview, Fong said it was inappropriate to discuss the Stelley case because it had been investigated and closed by the department, the district attorney's office and the Office of Citizen Complaints. Fong said officers rarely fire their weapons, and then only to protect lives.

She said her administration is continuing to improve training on dealing with the mentally ill.

Had officers used appropriate tactics at the Metreon, "They could have really avoided this whole thing," said Samuel Walker, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and an expert on police accountability. "It's very lucky that officers weren't killed."

Lou Reiter, a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said, "They suddenly found themselves in a situation where they had to make a split-second decision whether to pull the trigger. The critical issue is, there was no reason for them to ever have been in that position."

'Tonight, I might die'

Operating under difficult conditions, officers may have only seconds to assess a suspect's behavior, the potential threat, and respond, said San Francisco police Sgt. Jerry Salvador, who has trained officers on the use of firearms. The department's firearms training is rigorous, he said, and simulates real-life situations in which officers must decide whether to shoot.

San Francisco officers handle the vast majority of their duties without using any kind of force, but even routine assignments can suddenly turn dangerous.

In moments, officers may experience an "adrenaline dump," increased heart rates and spiking blood pressure, said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina who has studied how and why officers use force. They may have tunnel vision and their hearing may be impaired.

They may also be operating in poorly lighted areas with sirens or other noise, making communication difficult, Alpert said.

Amid this, they must assess whether the suspect will cooperate or poses an imminent threat. They may face conflicting urges to defend themselves and do no harm. They must react based on instinct and training, Alpert said.

That's why Alpert and other police practices experts analyze officer-involved shootings not as an isolated "frame," but as the last in a sequence of frames.

From this perspective, every shooting incident actually begins seconds or minutes before the trigger is pulled, even before officers contact the suspect. "How you approach the situation -- the decisions you make, the position you take, whether you take cover -- those are frames leading up to the final frame," Alpert said.

The officers face further challenges because they often receive reports of crimes in progress that turn out to be false. The department's training workbook warns that "responding officers can easily become complacent."

"Each and every call must be taken seriously," the workbook says. "Responding officers should approach the call under the assumption that it involves suspects who are armed and dangerous and take all necessary precautions."

The incident in theater 14 was reconstructed by The Chronicle using emergency dispatch tapes, statements of officers and witnesses to homicide inspectors, and other police records. None of the officers involved would comment.

Stelley, a student at Heald College, had a history of borderline personality disorder and was feeling depressed. His girlfriend, Summer Galbreath, 21, would later tell the police she took him to a movie to cheer him up. The couple sat in the last row of the steeply banked theater for the 10:55 p.m. showing of "Swordfish," which begins with a scene in which police and bank robbers fire at each other.

After Galbreath went to the restroom, Stelley lit a cigarette. When theater employees climbed the stairs to ask him to put it out, he stood up, clenching something. They turned back.

"You come back, you better be packing," Stelley called after them, according to another patron, Xavier Tasker.

Others called for quiet, and Stelley said, "I don't mean to be rude. Everybody need to get up out of here. I know you probably got kids or family. I don't want to kill nobody."

Tasker, sitting near the front of the theater, stood and declared: "The man got a gun. Everybody got to get up." The theater emptied quickly.

Galbreath, returning from the restroom, threaded her way through fleeing people. Someone told her a man inside had a gun.

When she reached her seat, Stelley told her to leave. "Go home, be with your family. They need you. And I don't want you to stay because you might get hurt. Tonight, I might die."

Galbreath kissed him and left to call for help.

The first police car pulled up at the Metreon at 11:32 p.m. Two more arrived in the next minute.

Police were told a man in theater 14 might be suicidal. As officers headed there, at least two paused when they heard Galbreath tell a police dispatcher that she had seen neither a gun nor a knife.

"I think that he's just in trouble, he's in trouble, and I don't want anybody to get hurt," she said.

But some of the officers thought the call might be a prank, an officer told homicide inspectors. One officer broadcast a preliminary Code 4, meaning "No further assistance needed."

Eight officers entered theater 14. Six clustered near the foot of stairs on the left side and looked up at Stelley, who was about 60 feet away in the last row. The other two, on the right side, began moving across the rows of seats.

The theater was dark except for the unsteady light from the movie. The officers shined their flashlights on Stelley. They shouted at him to stand up, hold out his hands and walk down the stairs.

"You're gonna have to kill me," Stelley said, and started down the stairs, waving a knife.

As he walked, two officers moved to the left of the stairs. Three were to the right, the others at the bottom. Some feared he would get out of the theater.

Three officers sprayed him with pepper spray. It seemed to have no effect. One officer hit his arm with a baton. They then retreated.

Suddenly, Stelley jumped down the last two steps and crouched behind a seat. Then he sprang up and swung his jackknife on a 13-inch chain above his head.

Three officers were still at the landing at the foot of the stairs, potentially exposed to Stelley.

Officer Arshad Razzak was closest. "I could just hear the chain going in the air," he would later tell homicide investigators.

"I was really fearing for my life and my partner's life and everybody that was around me. When he got that close, I had no choice but to defend myself." He fired his handgun until it ran out of bullets.

Officer Joseph Garbayo, also at the foot of the stairs, fired at least once. Officer Georgia Sawyer, a few rows above Stelley, fired at least twice.

Officer Thomas Walsh, moving toward the exit, heard a "pop," felt pain in his left buttock and fell. Thinking Stelley had shot him, he fired at least nine times without aiming. "I thought that if I took the time to try to aim, he'd already have shot me again," Walsh told investigators. "So I just kind of got my gun up and tried to shoot straight down the corridor."

Officers then reported a shooting in theater 14. Walsh was wounded. Stelley was dead.

Nearly two years later, a mandatory homicide investigation said the officers fired after Stelley swung the knife at Officer Razzak and cut his shirt. The internal affairs bureau was then required to determine whether the officers violated policy or training.

More than three years after the shooting, on Dec. 6, 2004, Chief Fong sent the Police Commission a required summary of both investigations. It said the officers broke no rules.

"The officers' actions," Fong wrote, "were based on their belief that they had attempted all other reasonable methods of apprehension and control under the circumstances and if the suspect was not apprehended immediately, the officers present would continue to face imminent death or serious bodily injury."

Fong, who at the time of the shooting was deputy chief responsible for patrol operations, did not include significant information about the officers' tactics.

In her 11-page summary, she described the incident in some detail but did not tell the commissioners about what experts said were significant facts: She didn't mention that:

-- Officers clustered at the bottom of the steps without cover.

-- Officers discharged bullets in a cross fire.

-- A police bullet struck one officer, he in turn fired repeatedly without aiming, and several police bullets struck the wall of an adjacent theater.

-- There was no police supervisor inside the theater.

All of this should have been in the summary so the commissioners would have information that could help them manage the department, said Reiter, the former Los Angeles deputy chief.

More serious, he said, was that Fong did not address "those reasonable options the officers did not elect to take -- the normal way you would handle a barricaded suspect or emotionally disturbed person."

The department's training workbook said officers should be prepared to encounter emotionally disturbed people, including those who may try to provoke officers to use deadly force.

Officers should be as nonthreatening as possible, establish a perimeter, try to calm the person, and avoid physical contact that could frighten or excite him.

The training workbook also instructs officers to take cover and call in specialists who can negotiate with the suspect or use nonlethal means to subdue him.

The experts said the officers had a crucial advantage: The theater was empty. "They could have waited this guy out," Walker said.

The Office of Citizen Complaints, in its summary, said it was unclear whether the officers could have acted differently, given their lack of training for such situations. It said the department "is responsible for failing to properly and effectively train these officers."

Further training for officers

Chief Fong, while declining to discuss the Stelley incident, said her summary letter to the commission is not meant to include "all the fine details." If commissioners want more information, they can ask for it. She added that her letters "have been far more detailed than letters written in the past."

Although Fong's summary found no violations of policy, it detailed recent training efforts that addressed aspects of the shooting.

Fong said she had taken several steps "to improve officers' training with respect to interacting with persons who are mentally ill."

This included training on crisis intervention; classes on the best ways to handle violent suspects; and wide distribution of "beanbag guns" to subdue suspects without killing them.

Other recent training, she wrote, emphasized senior officers assuming leadership at the scene, constant communication among officers, "the need to point out potential cross-fire dangers," and "those circumstances under which officers may or may not discharge firearms."

Fong's letter also said the officers who fired at Stelley had been recommended for additional training on shooting in low-light conditions.

In an interview, Fong added, "The goal here is always to try to take the lessons learned and then see how we can provide additional guidance and training to our officers. We have to be mindful of the fact that the officers are the ones who are willing to put their lives on the line to protect the public."

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